


Paper Hearts

by PaddyWack



Series: Second Chances (In Which Altair Utterly Fails At Parenting But His Brothers Love Him Anyway) [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Fluff, Kid!Lucy, Kid!Rebecca, Kid!Shaun, M/M, Shaun is NOT Harry Potter, Slice of Life, kid!Desmond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 02:44:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaddyWack/pseuds/PaddyWack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desmond doesn't want to go back to school, Malik needs to child proof the bedroom, Altair isn't helping and Shaun might be a wizard.</p>
<p>Or, the one where Desmond makes some remarkable friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> The response to the first bit of this series was better than I hoped, so I decided to see where I could take this little lovechild. I have a list. That list is tentative. 
> 
> We'll see what happens.
> 
> (Apologies for mistakes, I was so fed up with this thing by the time I was finished that I didn't give it a proper read-through.)

**Paper Hearts**

 

_-i-_

“No!”

 

Altair bites back a sigh and tries in vain to hold the wriggling body still in his lap. “Des – “

 

“No! I don’t wanna go! I don’t _want_ to!”

 

“You have to go to school.” He grunts as a bony elbow digs into his stomach and forces him to readjust his hold.  Desmond slips free and hits the floor at a run, disappearing into the bedroom. “Desmond!”

 

Malik bends from his place at the kitchen counter to pick up Desmond’s discarded shoes and stays kneeling there in the floor by Altair, an amused smile curling the edge of his mouth. “He’s just scared.”

 

 “I know,” he sighs, scrubbing his face with his hands. “He still has to go. The judge will have a fit if I let him stay home any longer.” 

 

“You don’t think it’s too soon?” Malik taps the shoes together so the little red lights flash rapidly along the heel. “He’s had a harder time adjusting than either Ezio or Connor did. Maybe we should give him another month.”

 

“He’ll get too far behind and have to take special classes. It’ll just be worse if we wait.” He drops his head against the back of the chair with a heavy thunk. “I didn’t think it’d be this hard,” he mutters quietly, mostly to himself, but he knows Malik hears him by the way he chuckles and grips his knees lightly with his warm hands. Desmond’s shoes blink happily from the floor.

 

“You thought raising a kid would be easy?”

 

“The sarcasm isn’t appreciated.”

 

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I hurt your feelings?” Malik teases. “Do you need to curl up in a corner and cry for a little while?”

 

Altair lifts his head so his eye roll is more obvious and pinches Malik on the arm. Malik immediately smacks his knee in reprisal. “You’re bedside manner could use some work, you know,” he says dryly.

 

“You weren’t complaining last night,” Malik quips, digging his thumbs gently into Altair’s thighs and smirking from the floor.

 

“I wasn’t really in a position to do much of anything last night.”

 

They both share a secret grin, causing a familiar bloom of heat low in Altair’s belly. He reaches down to card his fingers through Malik’s hair and pulls him up as he leans down so their mouths touch and mold together in the space between them. Malik sighs in the kiss and slips his hands up from Altair’s thighs to his hips, teasing the exposed skin there above his waistband.

 

He tastes like coffee and hazelnut. So warm and so good that Altair almost forgets to breathe, almost forgets that his brothers could walk in any second and see them. Not that it’s a secret they’re together or anything but, well, it can be a difficult thing to understand for some so young.

 

He curls his fingers into loose fists through Malik’s hair and licks deeper into his mouth, bending his head back so far it has to hurt. Has to, but Malik never complains if it does. He wants to press even closer. He wants to drag Malik down to the floor and just go at it right there in the middle of the kitchen because seeing Malik completely wrecked and blissed out is probably the most beautiful thing in this entire world.

 

But of course they can’t go that far.

 

Not yet, anyway.

 

He breaks the kiss with a wet sound and rests their foreheads together, slotting his nose next to Malik’s and fitting his thumbs just behind his ears to keep him steady. A smile breaks across his face unbidden and he tips his chin forward to kiss Malik again, short and sweet.

 

“We can continue this later,” he murmurs, smirking as Malik hums against his lips. “I have to get Desmond to school.”

 

“ _Or_ he can stay home for another month and go when he’s ready.”

 

Altair chuckles and shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t think he’ll want to stay behind anymore.” At Malik’s confused frown, he grins and straightens back up in his seat just as Desmond comes running back down the hall with his backpack clutched against his chest and a horrified look on his impossibly young face.

 

“Ready to go?” Altair asks, standing up from his chair. Desmond gives a jerky nod and fast-walks to the door, the tips of his ears burning a bright red.

 

Malik stands from the floor as well, his frown deepening now in worry. “What’s wrong? Desmond?”

 

“He’ll be fine,” Altair interjects as his littlest brother walks out the front door and to the car without even grabbing his shoes. Altair picks them up from the floor, the smug amusement stretching the pinkish scar on his mouth into a boyish smile. “Though from now on he’ll probably know better than to hide in our room.”

 

Malik gives him an unimpressed look. “I don’t see why he would suddenly be so eager for school just from going into our room.”

 

“And maybe,” Altair continues. “You’ll start putting those naked pictures you take of me away instead of leaving them on the dresser where anybody can see them.”

 

The sudden furious blush that overtakes Malik’s face is almost as comical as the wide eyed sputtering he makes as Altair walks out the door with a careless backward wave of his hand.

 

“Later, Malik!”

 

_-i-_

The other kids keep staring at him. He should be used to it by now since all the kids at his last school did the same thing. They always stared at his bruises and would tease him about being such a klutz and gosh, Desmond, can’t you go one day without running into a door?

 

But he doesn’t have bruises anymore, so why are they _staring_.

 

The crayon in his fist snaps in half and a girl in the next row giggles. He feels his cheeks heat up. There’s a jagged streak of color on his drawing now from how hard he was pressing on the red crayon. It’s ruined. The entire thing is completely ruined.

 

He wants to go home. He wants Ezio to carry him around on his shoulders like he always does when Desmond’s sad, and he wants Connor to help him bandage Night-Night Owl’s wing since it got ripped last week when they were trying to climb Malik’s tree, and he wants Altair and Malik to tell him more stories about dragons and fearless men dressed in white.

 

But they aren’t here, because this is stupid school and his brothers have to stay in their own stupid school that’s across town and. Not. Here.

 

He glares down at his messed up drawing and blames it for all the kids that keep staring at him. Maybe if it didn’t look so dumb they wouldn’t look at him like that, like has two heads, like he’s some kind of alien. Maybe if it didn’t have such a huge red spot on it, if it didn’t look like blood, like gross, sticky blood…

 

He starts to shake in his chair. He snatches the drawing and balls it up in his trembling hands to hide the bloody mess he made. That’s why the kids are staring, he thinks, because they can see the blood and they know what Daddy did – they know Daddy hurt Altair on his birthday and made him bleed _so much_.

 

“No, no, no…” he whispers, frantically looking around for a place to throw the drawing away. He has to get rid of it. They can’t know, they can’t know, because Daddy will come back and –

 

….they can’t know.

 

_There_ , a trash can by the teacher’s desk. He pushes himself up on unsteady legs just as another boy slaps a clean sheet of paper under his nose and drags a desk across the aisle to sit next to him. Desmond stares in shock, frozen in place with the ruined picture crumpled in his sweaty hands.

 

The boy glances up at him from behind thick rimmed glasses and furrows his eyebrows like he’s annoyed by Desmond standing there like an idiot. After a second, he bends back over his own paper and continues drawing what looks like a brown blob with spikes on top surrounded by a giant pink heart.

 

Desmond doesn’t move, too afraid of what will happen if he does. What’s this boy doing? What does he want? Is he going to make fun of Desmond like everybody else? Stare at him some more? Except the boy isn’t staring, _Desmond_ is the one doing that.

 

He just wants to go home.

 

“Are you going to stand there all day?”

 

Desmond blinks and tightens his grip on the ball of paper. “No,” he snaps, trying to act tough. Ezio is tough. Ezio fights all the time because he’s super tough and no one wants to mess with Ezio.

 

“Then sit down,” The boy huffs. “I already got you paper, you don’t have to go get more.”

 

Because he’s not sure what else to do, he sits and looks at the blank sheet in front of him. When he looks back up at the boy again, he’s sorting out two separate stacks of cut-out construction paper hearts.

 

“I hate drawing,” The boy mutters miserably.

 

Desmond eyes his picture curiously. His hands have stopped shaking so much thanks to the distraction. “What’s it supposed to be?”

 

“It’s my dog Welby.” The boy lifts his chin stubbornly. “See, that’s his tail and ears, and that’s his nose.”

 

“Why’s he in a heart?”

 

“Because this is his Valentine’s Day card,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Duh.”

 

Desmond frowns, putting the ruined ball by the edge of his desk. “You sound weird.”

 

The boy rolls his eyes so hard Desmond’s kind of surprised they don’t fall out of his head. “Because I’m from _England.”_

“Like Harry Potter?”

 

“No, you bloody – I mean, _no._ Not like Harry Potter.”

 

“Did you go to Hogwarts?”

 

“What?”

 

“Are you a wizard?”

 

The boy gives him a blank look, like he simply doesn’t know what to do with Desmond anymore, and just when it’s starting to get uncomfortable and Desmond is thinking he should get up and go sit somewhere else,  the boy starts to laugh.

 

At first Desmond thinks he’s being laughed and starts to get up anyway, fed up and embarrassed, but then the boy grabs his shoulder and gives it a couple of reassuring, friendly pats. “Yeah,” he says through his giggles. “I’m Shaun the Wizard. Let’s be friends and I promise to not turn you into a frog.”

 

“You’re too little to do magic yet,” he mutters, but the boy, Shaun, only grins wider and shakes his head.

 

“Who you gonna make a card for?” he asks, turning back to the cut-out hearts. Desmond looks at his blank piece of paper and shrugs.

 

“Nobody. I don’t want to draw anymore.”

 

“Good.” Shaun slaps a handful of hearts onto his paper. “You can make one for Welby, too. He doesn’t appreciate art anyway so just glue these on it instead.  He likes pressies. I mean presents.”

 

“But – “

 

Ignoring him, Shaun twists around in his plastic seat and calls out to someone behind them. “Lucy, let me have some of your glue.”

A girl with yellow pigtails scowls from two seats back. “Use your own!”

 

“I don’t have any!”

 

“Ask Becca for hers then,” she retorts, turning back to her own card. Even this far away Desmond can tell it’s very pretty and wishes he could make something like that.

 

Shaun heaves a very put upon sigh. “But Rebecca _ate_ her glue.”

 

Lucy snaps her head to look at a dark-haired girl sitting beside her with an appalled grimace. The girl scowls and grabs up a bottle of Elmer’s Glue sitting on her desk, which she promptly throws at Shaun’s head.

 

“I didn’t _eat_ it, Shaun. I _tasted_ it. There’s a difference!”

 

“No there’s not,” Shaun retorts as he picks up the bottle of glue from the floor and turns back around, handing it to Desmond. “There’s really not. Girls are so dumb sometimes.” Desmond snickers and dutifully begins gluing down paper hearts for Welby the dog.

 

He doesn’t even notice when Shaun throws away the balled up drawing a few minutes later, or even that the kids have stopped looking at the two of them; the new kid and the boy who talks like Harry Potter.

 

At some point, he even starts to have a little fun.


End file.
